The most Popular Posts of the past seven days.

Mar 15, 2025

Tubby-ville

 


“The woke mind virus has struck again,” Tuberville said.

(The Republican former coach and nowAlabama U.S. Senator's comment came as he attacked Democrats, naturally.)

Full story HERE.

Remember: you get what you vote for.

Mar 14, 2025

Weather

 


There is a risk for severe storms from Friday at 7AM until Saturday at 7AM.  An area from Marengo and Perry counties westward are in an enhanced (level 3 out of 5) risk for severe weather. A band from Wilcox through Dallas, Lowndes, Autauga and Chilton counties is in a slight (level 2 out of 5) risk for severe weather. A third area that includes Butler, Montgomery, Elmore and Tallapoosa counties is in a marginal (level 1 out of 5) risk.

Spc Day 1 Outlook Adi

During this round, there is a risk of tornadoes as well as 60MPH winds and hail up to a quarter size.

CODE RED: Action 8 Chief Meteorologist Shane Butler has issued a CODE RED for the potentially more potent round of storms which are expected to last from 7AM on Saturday until 7AM Sunday. Much of the Action 8 viewing area is in a moderate (level 4 out of 5) risk for severe storms, including Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Selma and Greenville. The rest of the area, including Auburn and Troy, is in an enhanced (level 3 out of 5) risk. Tornadoes — some strong — are possible, as well as 70MPH winds and golf ball-size hail.

A CODE RED means that there is a significant risk to public safety and to property because of dangerous weather conditions.

You will need to have a constant, reliable way to get weather alerts from noon Saturday through the overnight hours on Sunday. There are a lot of weekend events in the area on Saturday, including the SLE Rodeo at Garrett Coliseum. Don’t rely on outdoor sirens.

Spc Day 4 Outlook Adix


America, Changed

 

It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot.

the Chinese have many advantages, but until recently America had the decisive one — we had more friends around the world. Unfortunately, over the last month and a half, America has smashed a lot of those relationships to smithereens.

President Trump does not seem to notice or care that if you betray people, or jerk them around, they will revile you. Over the last few weeks, the Europeans have gone from shock to bewilderment to revulsion. This period was for them what 9/11 was for us — the stripping away of illusions, the exposure of an existential threat. The Europeans have realized that America, the nation they thought was their friend, is actually a rogue superpower.

Mar 13, 2025

I pray this bill fails

 From HB231


 

This bill would propose an amendment to the
Constitution of Alabama of 2022, relating to public
K-12 schools, to require each local board of education to adopt a policy requiring that The Pledge of Allegiance be conducted to the United States flag and a prayer consistent with Judeo-Christian values be conducted at the commencement of each school day in each public K-12 school.

tRump: Eliminate birthright citizenship.

Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order Reaches the Supreme Court

Trump administration lawyers asked the justices to limit the sweep of decisions by three lower courts that had issued nationwide pauses on the policy.

NY Times: 

 "Birthright citizenship has long been considered a foundational principle of the United States. The 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are Americans. In the landmark 1898 case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court affirmed the guarantee of automatic citizenship for nearly all children born in the country. Since then, courts have upheld that expansive understanding of birthright citizenship."

United States Supreme Court Building - Wikipedia

Saturday Weather

 

Valid 151200Z - 161200Z

   ...THERE IS A MODERATE RISK OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS OVER PORTIONS OF
   SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA INTO SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL MS/AL...

   ...SUMMARY...
   A severe weather outbreak is expected on Saturday from the central
   Gulf coast states/Deep South into the Ohio Valley. Significant
   tornadoes (focused across the South), swaths of damaging gusts, and
   hail are expected.

Mar 12, 2025

The Morning Lesson

 From A N.Y. Times Bret Stephens column:

 

"It used to be common knowledge — not just among policymakers and economists but also high school students with a grasp of history — that tariffs are a terrible idea. The phrase “beggar thy neighbor” meant something to regular people, as did the names of Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis Hawley. Americans broadly understood how much their 1930 tariff, along with other protectionist and isolationist measures, did to turn a global economic crisis into another world war. Thirteen successive presidents all but vowed never to repeat those mistakes.

Until Donald Trump. Until him, no U.S. president has been so ignorant of the lessons of history. Until him, no U.S. president has been so incompetent in putting his own ideas into practice."

Full column in HERE.

 

Mar 11, 2025

A VERY old retailer may be going under

 This may contain: a plaque on the side of a building that says biscor's bay company

Canada's oldest retailer, Hudson's Bay department store, cannot pay its debts.

NPR has the story HERE.

Federal Grant Funding to Alabama

 From the PEW website....where Federal Funding goes to in Alabama:

 

Federal grants are a key component of every state’s budget, funding a wide range of public services and infrastructure. Nationally, Medicaid dominates, accounting for 68.8% of federal grants to states in fiscal year 2024, followed by income security (11.3%), transportation (7.6%), and education (5%).

Alabama's federal funding is spread across six broad policy areas:

  • Medicaid (58.8%)—Provides medical coverage for eligible low-income residents.
  • Other health (7.1%)—Funding for public health initiatives beyond Medicaid.
  • Income security (12.7%)—Programs that assist individuals and families in need, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the National School Lunch Program.
  • Transportation (11.1%)—Investments in infrastructure and transit projects.
  • Education (6.8%)—Support for K-12 schools, higher education, and related programs.
  • Everything else (3.5%)—Funding for other areas, such as administration of justice, agriculture, energy, natural resources and environment, and community development.

Note: The data reflects enacted funding levels and the latest state allocations available. The Federal Funds Information for States (FFIS) grants database, the primary data source, tracks more than 90% of federal funds going to state and local governments. The policy areas shown generally align with budget functions in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s classification system, which groups federal spending by purpose. “Other health” includes all health funding other than Medicaid and the Medicare Part D “clawback,” a payment from states to reimburse the federal government for certain costs. “Income security” also includes social services funding. “Everything else” includes grant funding for administration of justice (a budget category that includes several programs); agriculture; community and regional development; criminal justice assistance (including funds to improve child abuse investigations and prosecutions); energy; general government, including mineral leasing; natural resources and environment; and training and employment. The FFIS database largely excludes funding to address the COVID-19 pandemic. In some cases, funding includes amounts made available outside of the standard appropriations process, including some funding provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Sources: Analysis by The Pew Charitable Trusts of data from Federal Funds Information for States

 

Mar 10, 2025

tRump

 From The NY Times:

 

"Trump’s attack on Zelensky (on Friday) is just the latest salvo against our allies. Back in office, Trump has taught our most important strategic partners a lesson they will not soon forget: America can — and will — change sides. Its voters may indeed choose a leader who will abandon our traditional alliances and actively support one of the world’s most dangerous and oppressive regimes."

Full story is HERE

Canada/U.S.

 
Canada 'never, ever, will be part of America': Next prime minister pushes back on Trump. "He’s attacking Canadian workers, families and businesses. We can’t let him succeed and we won’t."

How would you feel if it was Canada saying it was going to take the U.S....or maybe just a few Northern States?

It Ain't happening, folks. For once, and maybe always, ignore tRump.

Mar 9, 2025

The AP: Remembering 60 Years Ago.

An Alabama state trooper swings a club at John Lewis, right foreground, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala., March 7, 1965. (AP Photo, File)

SELMA, Ala. (AP) — Charles Mauldin was near the front of a line of voting rights marchers walking in pairs across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965.

The marchers were protesting white officials’ refusal to allow Black Alabamians to register to vote, as well as the killing days earlier of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a minister and voting rights organizer who was shot by a state trooper in nearby Marion.

At the apex of the span over the Alabama River, they saw what awaited them: a line of state troopers, deputies and men on horseback. After they approached, law enforcement gave a warning to disperse and then unleashed violence.

“Within about a minute or a half, they took their billy clubs, holding it on both ends, began to push us back to back us in, and then they began to beat men, women and children, and tear gas men, women and children, and cattle prod men, women and children viciously,” said Mauldin, who was 17 at the time.

Selma on Sunday marked the 60th anniversary of the clash that became known as Bloody Sunday. The attack shocked the nation and galvanized support for the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965. The annual commemoration paid homage to those who fought to secure voting rights for Black Americans and brought calls to recommit to the fight for equality.

For foot soldiers of the movement, the celebration comes amid concerns about new voting restrictions and the Trump administration’s effort to remake federal agencies they said helped make America a democracy for all

“This country was not a democracy for Black folks until that happened,” Mauldin said of voting rights. “And we’re still constantly fighting to make that a more concrete reality for ourselves.”

Speaking at the pulpit of the city’s historic Tabernacle Baptist Church, the site of the first mass meeting of the voting rights movement, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said what happened in Selma changed the nation. But he said the 60th anniversary comes at a time when there is “trouble all around” and some “want to whitewash our history.” But he said like the marchers of Bloody Sunday, they must keep going.

“At this moment, faced with trouble on every side, we’ve got to press on,” Jeffries said to the crowd that included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, multiple members of Congress and others gathered for the commemoration.

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama said they are gathering in Selma for the 60th anniversary “at a time when the vote is in peril.”

Sewell noted the number of voting restrictions introduced since the U.S. Supreme Court effectively abolished a key part of the Voting Rights Act that required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to pre-clear new voting laws with the Justice Department

Sewell this week reintroduced legislation to restore the requirement. The proposal has repeatedly stalled in Congress. The legislation is named for John Lewis, the late Georgia congressman who was at the lead of the Bloody Sunday march.

The annual celebration will conclude with a ceremony and march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. At the time, the Bloody Sunday marchers walked in pairs across the Selma bridge. Mauldin was in the third pair of the line led by Lewis and Hosea Williams.

“We had steeled our nerves to a point where we were so determined that we were willing to confront. It was past being courageous. We were determined, and we were indignant,” Mauldin recalled in an interview with The Associated Press.

Mauldin, who took a blow to the head, said he believes law enforcement officers were trying to incite a riot as they attacked marchers.

Kirk Carrington was just 13 on Bloody Sunday. As the violence erupted, a white man on a horse wielding a stick a chased him all the way back to the public housing projects where his family lived.

Carrington said he started marching after witnessing his father get belittled by his white employers when his father returned from service in World War II. Standing in Tabernacle Baptist Church where he was trained in non-violent protest tactics 60 years earlier, he was brought to tears thinking about what the people of his city achieved.

“When we started marching, we did not know the impact we would have in America. We knew after we got older and got grown that the impact it not only had in Selma, but the impact it had in the entire world,” Carrington said.

Dr. Verdell Lett Dawson, who grew up in Selma, remembers a time when she was expected to lower her gaze if she passed a white person on the street to avoid making eye contact.

Dawson and Mauldin said they are concerned about the potential dismantling of the Department of Education and other changes to federal agencies. Trump has pushed to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the federal government.

Support from the federal government “is how Black Americans have been able to get justice, to get some semblance of equality, because left to states’ rights, it is going to be the white majority that’s going to rule,” Dawson said.

“That that’s a tragedy of 60 years later: what we are looking at now is a return to the 1950s,” Dawson said.

(NOTE: This is an excellent example of reporting by The Associated Press....a news organization now banned from the tRump White House and other normally shared news "beats".)

Weather Watch

 March 15 severe weather outlook

Naturally

 Considering who tRump named as head of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Junior, this is a natural:

March 7 - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning a large study into potential connections between vaccines and autism, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, despite extensive scientific research that has disproven or failed to find evidence of such links.

Don't be shocked when THIS study finds a connection. 

Of Course.

  No shock that tRump---a draft dodger during The Vietnam War---would slash spending at The Veterans Administration. He probably resents those who served.

Read the story HERE.

 

 

Mar 8, 2025

A Civil Rights Event in Montgomery on Friday

 

"With its racially and economically diverse landscape and a growing population, the South is an actively changing region. But the politics of Southern states do not reflect that dynamism. Most Southern state legislatures are controlled by Republican supermajorities, and their members do not resemble the public they represent.

The status quo may not last, though. Newly elected legislators are tearing down barriers to effective policymaking and working to pass laws that respond to the changing electorate. It’s possible to imagine a totally different Southern political landscape just over the horizon, with competitive elections staffing governments that are responsive to the people."